“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added
…

In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.”

“We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians,” Schneeberger added.

(emphasis added)

I note that according to the American Religious Identification Survey, in 2001 about 1 million people identified themselves as “Evangelical” — they were outnumbered by Muslims. That’s less than 0.5% of the US population.

So can we expect Dobson et al. to drop the “America is a Christian nation” argument?

Fez:
You’ve got a point. IIRC the nice thing about ARIS was that they didn’t make people pick a religion from a list, but rather asked people what they consider themselves. Presumably a lot of Baptists consider themselves “born again”, but only 58,000 people identified themselves as “born again” as their primary identification.

So yeah, I’m sure it undercounts the evangelicals, but if I hadn’t played silly buggers with the numbers, the post wouldn’t have been as amusing.